The Talk
by Katie Ladmoore
Summary: Vader must do the most awkward thing as a parent: giving Luke "The Talk." Luke asks some rather odd questions, and awkwardness ensues! AU.


**Hello, there! This story was inspired by a challenge on the Random Order forum by WereCats Rule! So thanks, WereCat! Also, this is somewhat AU because... well... you'll see. Enough of me, read and review!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars, The Talk, No Child Left Behind, Lord of the Rings, healthcare legislation, The Office, or One Ring to Rule Them All.**

* * *

**The Talk**

Emperor Palpatine had summoned Darth Vader to come to his throne room immediately. The armor-clad Sith apprentice quickly hurried to meet his master. He burst into the room with quite an impressive and flustering entrance. He kneeled down in front of the ugly, wrinkled Sith Lord.

"What is your bidding, Master?" Vader inquired.

"Have you seen your son lately, Vader?"

"My son? You mean Luke?" confirmed, standing up.

"Well, I'm pretty sure Leia is your _daughter_…"

Beneath his hood, Palpatine wrinkled his nose.

"No, not lately," was Vader's reply.

"How old is he?"

"Ten, Master."

"That's what I thought. I think you need to talk to him, Vader."

"Is this about the whole strangling-his-mother-the-night-he-was-born thing? I've tried explaining that to him _thousands_ of times! Yet still, he never quite understands…"

"Um… Well, no. You see, very soon, Luke is going to go through some _changes_, and it's your job as his only living parent to _educate_ him on what will happen."

"Kkkkkhhhh," Vader choked into his respirator. Once he caught his breath again, he stammered, "You mean I have to give him…" his deep voice quivered, "_The Talk_?"

The Emperor nodded.

"It has to happen sometime!"

"Can't Owen and Beru do it? They're his legal guardians!"

"I think he'll understand it better coming from you."

"No he won't! He still thinks I was born in this suit!"

Palpatine was shocked.

_After all that legislation I passed, yet another child left behind…_

"Vader… Owen and Beru are too over-protective. If you leave it to them, Luke will be clueless until he's thirty!"

"Well, then I have plenty of time to prepare! It's not like we'll both be dead and the Jedi Order will be re-formed!"

"This is an o_rder_, Vader!" the Emperor snapped.

Vader gave up, sighing his submission.

"Yes, Master."

He walked out of the throne room and went to the hangar.

"I wonder where the slideshow that Obi-Wan showed me is…"

* * *

Young, ten-year old Luke Skywalker was unhappily fixing a broken moisture vaporator on the dull, dusty Lars homestead.

"I bet Biggs doesn't have to do this every single day," he muttered, picking out some sand that had jammed the vaporator.

Soon, his boredom ceased, as he faintly heard voices floating angrily from the house. Curious, he ran over to see what it was.

* * *

Previously, Ben Kenobi whistled as he washed the dishes in his lonely hut. Suddenly, he heard a banging at his door.

"I'm coming!" he called. He stopped to sense the presence of the caller. It couldn't be…

"Vader? What do you want?" he asked as he opened the door.

"I was wondering if you have…"

"NO! For the last time, Vader, I'm _not_ giving you your lightsaber back! Finders, keepers!"

"So you admit that it's _my_ lightsaber!"

"It _was_ your lightsaber," corrected Ben stridently.

"Anyway, that's not what I came for!"

"I'm not giving you my recipe for womp rat soup, either!"

"_I don't care about your womp rat soup_! Not right now, at least. I was wondering… Do you still have that slideshow?"

"Which slideshow? The one about the dangers of too much Jawa Juice? The one about dropping your lightsaber on your foot?"

"Um, no. The one about… The Talk."

Ben's jaw dropped open.

"What do you need that one for?"

"I… need to… talk to Luke," stammered the Sith.

"Who do you think you are to have that talk with him? You're not even his legal guardian, not since you strangled Padmé!"

Darth Vader irately pointed his gloved, prosthetic finger at his former Jedi mentor.

"_Don't_ remind me of that!"

"And anyway, Owen and Beru are going to talk to him when he's thirty. They figure you and the Emperor will be dead, and the Jedi order will be re-formed by then."

Vader lowered his finger and sighed. The breath escaping from his mouth sounded like air coming out of a tire.

"_Really_, Obi-Wan?"

Ben shrugged.

"I'm not for it that much either, but he's _their _foster son."

"But he's _my_ biological son!"

"I really wish you'd go away; My favorite show is coming on soon. Ha, it's a miracle I can even get cable out here…"

"Just give me the slideshow, and I'll be gone."

"Gee, Vader, it got destroyed ten years ago, when you marched on the Jedi Temple and you were still attractive."

Vader resisted the urge to whip out his lightsaber and kill the old man right then and there.

"Fine. I'll be off to see my son, then, left to my own devices."

Vader turned away, his sand-covered cape swishing behind him. Ben closed the door to the hut and retreated to a storage trunk. He pulled out a file of his many, very educational slideshows.

"My precious," he murmured fondly, stroking the disc.

* * *

Darth Vader continued down the path to the Lars's house.

"Ugh, I got sand in my boots!" he exclaimed and removed the grainy material from his shoes.

He looked up and saw his destination. Just as he had done with Ben, he approached the dwelling and knocked tentatively on the door. So far, there was no sign of his son. Owen was the one to answer the door. His mouth dropped open, quite similar to Ben's reaction.

"Vader! What are _you_ doing here? Seriously, come here again uninvited and I'm filing for a restraining order!"

"First of all, I have diplomatic immunity, and second, I came here to talk to my son."

"If this is about you strangling Padmé again, Luke doesn't want to talk about it."

"Not that! I came to talk to him about… something else."

"What else could you possibly be coming to talk to him about?"

Behind his mask, Vader was wetting his burned, overly-chapped lips nervously.

"Oh, you know… Growing up."

"No! I can't let you do that! Beru and I are going to do it later, when he's thirty! By then, hopefully you and the Emperor will be dead and the Jedi Order will have been re-formed!"

"It needs to happen sooner than later, Owen! He can't live his entire young adult life oblivious!"

"I won't let you talk to him!"

"Dad?"

Luke, almost an exact copy of his father when he was ten, had approached the house.

"Luke! It's good to see you again!"

Vader held out his arms for his son to hug him, but Luke refused. Inside, Vader was upset. He quite liked hugs. And it's not like Palpatine was much of a huggable person.

"Is this about Mom again? Seriously, I don't want to talk about it anymore!"

"Well, Luke, no. This isn't about your mother's death. I want to talk to you about something… less violent and fun."

Vader walked over to where his son was standing, put his mechanical arm around the boy's shoulder, and led him off, all much to Owen's displeasure. He picked out a bench set back from the house. Luke sat down warily; it took almost ten minutes for Darth Vader to sit down.

"Stupid armor," he muttered, "if it weren't for that silly incident on Mustafar, I wouldn't _have_ this problem!"

He looked over at Luke, who was looking at him quizzically.

"Never mind. I'll tell you when you're older. Now, where to begin… Luke, you're going to go through some… changes soon, and I feel that it's my place to…" Vader gulped. "_Educate_ you on the matter."

Luke blinked.

"First of all, you're going to get acne. Everywhere. Now, a good acne cream can fix that if you apply it every day. It certainly worked for me."

Luke cocked his head.

"How did you get acne? Does it just pop up on your suit?"

Vader let out a hiss of breath.

"Luke, I was not born in this suit."

The ten-year-old was shocked.

"But…"

"In fact, I used to be very attractive."

"Don't lie to me. I know that suit was there when you were born. Did Grandma wear a suit like that too?"

"No! Anyway, Luke, your voice is going to get deeper. It won't be high-pitched for much longer."

Luke was staring at Darth Vader with a look that said, _Are you kidding me?_

"Does that mean my voice is gonna sound like yours? I don't wanna sound like you!" Luke cried.

"Luke, I highly doubt your voice will get this deep," sighed Vader.

"But it must run in the family! I learned about genetics in school! Oh, I hope deep voices aren't a dominant trait!"

"Dominant traits? You're in the fifth—Never mind, I don't want to know."

Luke lowered his voice, a question bubbling in his mind. He was a little nervous to ask, but since the opportunity was golden…

"I gonna get moody every month like Aunt Beru does?"

In a flashback, Vader remembered Padmé's outbursts every month. The horror…

"_Anakin! You forgot to take out the trash! AGAIN! Those rotten potatoes aren't going to smell any better if you just leave them sitting there!" Padmé screeched, seething, as her husband was busy watching _The Office.

_Anakin giggled._

"_PO-TA-TOES. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!"_

_Padmé let out an angry shriek and hurled the latest piece of healthcare legislation at Anakin furiously. Then she plopped down next to him on the sofa and began to cry._

"_Anakin, I want chocolate!"_

_A very flustered Anakin patted her on the back and stood up, swallowing in fear. _

"_There, there… I'll go get you some chocolate right now…" To himself, he muttered, "Good thing I marked the calendar for future reference!"_

"Dad? Dad?" Luke shook his father's shoulder. "Dad, are you okay?"

Vader, who had painfully been staring into space, came back to Earth… er, Tatooine. He sighed again. With all this sighing, it was certainly going to be a long day.

"Well, Luke. Only girls do that. But one day you're going to meet a very nice girl and you're going to get married and live in a cute little house with a picket fence and have a family and maybe a dog named Skippy who has a little black spot on his eye. And then, every month, your wife is going to get very mad and then cry. Watch out for the flying objects, and give her exactly what she wants when she wants it."

Luke nodded, his brow furrowed, genuinely taking in everything his father was saying.

"Oh, and mark the calendar for future reference," added Vader. "And speaking of, I also need to talk about girls with you."

"You're not going to give me those free samples that girls get, are you?"

"No… But very soon, you are going to notice girls. You are going to notice that they're becoming either attractive or really awkward and then attractive in college. You have to treat them with the utmost respect they deserve because we men would be nothing without-"

"Says the man who _strangled _my _mother_," Luke interrupted.

The boy frowned, and Vader sighed yet again. So much for his grandiloquence.

"I really wish you wouldn't bring that up. Now-"

"Dad, how are babies made?" queried Luke curiously, interrupting the _Sith_ for the _second_ time in a row.

Underneath his mask, Darth Vader's pallid, burned skin became covered with blood rising up to his cheeks. His respirator stopped working for a few seconds.

"Well, Luke," he began to answer tautly, "Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru will tell you later, when you're thirty."

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**Haha, that was fun to write! Anyone who gets why One Ring to Rule Them All is in the disclaimer is awesome. Please review! Reviews are warmly welcomed with widely-opened arms, so go click the cute little green button below! All flames will be used to make Palpatine empathize with Anakin. **

**~Katie**


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